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GETTYSBURG: 
A BATTLE ODE 



GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP 



Jfuly 3, 1888 



GETTYSBURG: 
A BATTLE ODE 



READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC, AT 

GETTYSBURG, ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE BATTLE, JULY 3, 1 888 



BY 

GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP 



NEW-YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1888 



THE DE VINNE PRESS 




Ah 



Copyright, 1888, 
By George Parsons Lathrop. 



NOTE. 

Several isolated passages from this Ode were published 
in Scribner's Magazine for July, 1888. In the following 
pages the poem appears for the first time as a whole, with 
some changes made in revision. Two strophes, originally 
designed to form a part of the composition, but not hereto- 
fore made public, are now inserted in the place assigned 
them. 

The field of Gettysburg was in itself a world of battle, 
unrolling episodes of action and instances of bravery 
almost numberless. A few of the main movements only 
are touched upon in the following pages ; not from lack 
of deep and fervid appreciation, but owing to the limita- 
tions always imposed by poetic form and treatment. For 
this reason, also, few of those constellated names appear 
which burn in our memories of this great deed of arms. 

a. p. l. 



GETTYSBURG: A BATTLE ODE. 



i. 

VICTOBS, living, with laureled brow, 
And you that sleep beneath the sward! 
Your song was poured from cannon throats : 
It rang in deep-tongued bugle-notes : 
Your triumph came; you won your crown, 
The grandeur of a world's renown. 
But, in our later lays, 
Full freighted with your praise, 
Fair memory harbors those whose lives, laid down 
In gallant faith and generous heat, 
Gained only sharp defeat. 
All are at peace, who once so fiercely warred : 
Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord. 

1A 



2 Getty slur g : A Battle Ode. 

ii. 

For, if we say God wills, 
Shall we then idly deny Him 
Care of each host in the fight? 
His thunder was here in the hills 
When the guns were loud in July; 
And the flash of the musketry's light 
Was sped by a ray from God's eye. 
In its good and its evil the scheme 
Was framed with omnipotent hand, 
Though the battle of men was a dream 
That they could but half understand. 
Can the purpose of God pass by him? 
Nay; it was sure, and was wrought 
Under inscrutable powers: 
Bravely the two armies fought 
And left the land, that was greater than they, still theirs 
and ours ! 

in. 

Lucid, pure, and calm and blameless 

Dawned on Gettysburg the day 
That should make the spot, once fameless, 

Known to nations far away. 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

Birds were caroling, and farmers 

Gladdened o'er their garnered hay, 
When the clank of gathering armors 

Broke the morning's peaceful sway; 
And the living lines of foemen 

Drawn o'er pasture, brook, and hill, 
Formed in figures weird of omen 

That should work with mystic will 
Measures of a direful magic — 

Shattering, maiming — and should fill 
Glades and gorges with a tragic 

Madness of desire to kill. 
Skirmishers flung lightly forward 

Moved like scythemen skilled to sweep 
Westward o'er the field and nor'ward, 

Death's first harvest there to reap. 
You would say the soft, white smoke-puffs 

Were but languid clouds asleep, 
Here on meadows, there on oak-bluffs, 

Fallen foam of Heaven's blue deep. 
Yet that blossom-white, outbreaking 

Smoke wove soon a martyr's shroud. 
Eeynolds fell, with soul unquaking, 

Ardent-eyed and open-browed: 



4 Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

Noble men in humbler raiment 

Fell where shot their graves had plowed, 

Dying not for paltry payment : 
Proud of home, of honor proud. 

IV. 

Mute Seminary there, 
Filled once with resonant hymn and prayer, 
How your meek walls and windows shuddered then ! 
Though Doubleday stemmed the flood, 
McPherson's Wood and Willoughby's Eun 
Saw ere the set of sun 
The light of the gospel of blood. 
And, on the morrow again, 
Loud the unholy psalm of battle 

Burst from the tortured Devil's Den, 
In cries of men and musketry rattle 
Mixed with the helpless bellow of cattle 
Torn by artillery, down in the glen ; 

While, hurtling through the branches 
Of the orchard by the road, 
Where Sickles and Birney were walled with steel, 
Shot fiery avalanches 
That shivered hope and made the sturdiest reel. 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 5 

Yet peach-bloom bright as April saw 

Blushed there anew, in blood that flowed 
O'er faces white with death-dealt awe ; 
And ruddy flowers of warfare grew 
Though withering winds as of the desert blew, 
Far at the right, while Ewell and Early, 
Plunging at Slocum and Wadsworth and Greene, 
Thundered in onslaught consummate and surly, 
Till trembling mghtfall crept between 
And whispered of rest from the heat of the whelming 
strife. 
But unto those forsaken of life 
What has the night to say? 
Silent beneath the moony sky, 
Crushed in a costly dew they lie: 
Deaf to plaint or paean, they: — 
Freed from Earth's dull tyranny. 



v. 

Wordless the night-wind, funereal plumes of the tree-tops 
swaying — 
Writhing and nodding anon at" the beck of the unseen 
breeze ! 

IB 



6 Getty slur g : A Battle Ode. 

Yet its voice ever a murmur resumes, as of multitudes 
praying: 
Liturgies lost in a moan like the mourning of far-away- 
seas. 
May then those spirits, set free, a celestial council obeying, 
Move in this rustling whisper here thro' the dark, shaken 
trees ? — 
Souls that are voices alone to us, now, yet linger, returning 
Thrilled with a sweet reconcilement and fervid with 
speechless desire ? 
Sundered in warfare, immortal they meet now with won- 
der and yearning, 
Dwelling together united, a rapt, invisible choir : 
Hearken ! They wail for the living, whose passion of battle 

yet burning, 
Sears and enfolds them in coils, and consumes, like a ser- 
pent of fire ! 

VI. 



Men of New Hampshire, Pennsylvanians, 
Maine men, firm as the rock's rough ledge 

Swift Mississippians, lithe Carolinians 
Bursting over the battle's edge ! 

Bold Indiana men ; gallant Virginians ; 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

Jersey and Georgia legions clashing; — 
Pick of Connecticut ; quick Yermonters ; 

Louisianians, madly dashing ; — 
And, swooping still to fresh encounters, 

New York myriads, whirlwind-led ! — 
All your furious forces, meeting, 

Torn, entangled, and shifting place, 
Blend like wings of eagles beating 

Airy abysses, in angry embrace. 
Here in the midmost struggle combining — 

Flags immingled and weapons crossed — 
Still in union your States troop shining: 

Never a star from the lustre is lost ! 

VII. 

Once more the sun deploys his rays: 
Third in the trilogy of battle-days 
The awful Friday comes : 
A day of dread, 
That should have moved with slow, averted head 
And muffled feet, 
Knowing what streams of pure blood shed, 
What broken hearts and wounded lives must meet 
Its pitiless tread. 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

At dawn, like monster mastiffs baying, 
Federal cannon, with a din aff raying, 
Soused the old Stonewall brigade, 
That, eagerly and undismayed, 
Charged amain, to be repelled 

After four hours' bitter fighting, 

Forth and back, with bayonets biting; 
Where in years to come, the wood — 
Flayed and bullet-riddled — stood 
A presence ghostly, grim and stark, 

With trees all withered, wasted, gray, 

The place of combat night and day 
Like marshaled skeletons to mark. 
Anon, a lull : the troops are spelled. 
No sound of guns or drums 
Disturbs the air. 
Only the insect-chorus faintly hums, 

Chirping around the patient, sleepless dead 
Scattered, or fallen in heaps all wildly spread; 
Forgotten fragments left in hurried flight; 

Forms that, a few hours since, were human creatures, 
Now blasted of their features; 
Or stamped with blank despair; 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

Or with dumb faces smiling as for gladness, 

Though stricken by utter blight 
Of motionless, inert, and hopeless sadness. 
Fear you the naked horrors of a war? 
Then cherish peace, and take up arms no more. 

For, if you fight, you must 

Behold your brothers' dust 

Unpityingly ground down 

And mixed with blood and powder, 
To write the annals of renown 

That make a nation prouder ! 

VIII. 

All is quiet till one o'clock ; 

Then the hundred and fifty guns, 

Metal loaded with metal in tons, 
Massed by Lee, send out their shock. 

And, with a movement magnificent, 

Pickett, the golden-haired leader, 
Thousands and thousands flings onward, as if he sent 

Merely a meek interceder. 
Steadily sure his division advances, 
Gray as the light on its weapons that dances. 



10 Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

Agonized screams of the shell 
The doom that it carries foretell : 
Rifle-balls whistle, like sea-birds singing; 
Limbs are severed, and sonls set winging : 

Yet Pickett's warriors never waver. 
Show me in all the world anything braver 
Than the bold sweep of his fearless battalions, 
Three half-miles over ground unsheltered 
Up to the cannon, where regiments weltered 
Prone in the batteries' blast that raked 
Swaths of men and, flame-tongued, drank 
Their blood with eager thirst unslaked. 

Armistead, Kemper, and Pettigrew 
Rush on the Union men, rank against rank, 
Planting their battle-flags high on the crest. 
Pause not the soldiers, nor dream they of rest, 
Till they fall with their enemy's guns at the 
breast 
And the shriek in their ears of the wounded 
artillery stallions. 
So Pickett charged, a man indued 
With knightly power to lead a multitude 
And bring to fame the scarred surviving few. 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 11 

IX. 

In vain the mighty endeavor; 
In vain the immortal valor; 

In vain the insurgent life outpoured! 

Faltered the column, spent with shot and sword ; 

Its bright hope blanched with sudden pallor; 
While Hancock's trefoil bloomed in triple fame. 
He chose the field; he saved the second day; 

And, honoring here his glorious name, 
Again his phalanx held victorious sway. 
Meade's line stood firm, and volley on volley 

roared 
" Triumphant Union, soon to be restored, 
Strong to defy all foes and fears forever!" 

The Ridge was wreathed with angry fire 

As flames rise round a martyr's stake; 
For many a hero on that pyre 

Was offered for our dear land's sake, 

What time in heaven the gray clouds flew 

To mingle with the deathless blue; 

While here, below, the blue and gray 

Melted minglingly away, 
Mirroring Heaven to make another day. 



12 Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 

And we, who are Americans, we pray 

The splendor of strength that Gettysburg knew 
May light the long generations with glorious ray, 
And keep us undyingly true! 



Dear are the dead we weep for; 

Dear are the strong hearts broken! 
Proudly their memory we keep for 

Our help and hope; a token 
Of sacred thought too deep for 

Words that leave it unspoken. 
All that we know of fairest, 

All that we have of meetest, 
Here we lay down for the rarest 

Doers whose souls rose fleetest 
And in their homes of air rest, 

Ranked with the truest and sweetest. 
Days, with fiery-hearted, bold advances ; 

Nights in dim and shadowy, swift retreat ; 
Eains that rush with bright, embattled lances ; 
Thunder, booming round your stirless feet ; 
Winds that set the orchard with sweet fancies 
All abloom, or ripple the ripening wheat ; 



Gettysburg : A Battle Ode. 13 

Moonlight, starlight, on your mute graves falling ; 

Dew, distilled as tears unbidden flow; — 
Dust of drought in drifts and layers crawling ; 
Lulling dreams of softly whispering snow ; 
Happy birds, from leafy coverts calling ; — 

These go on, yet none of these you know : 
Hearing not our human voices 
Speaking to you all in vain, 
Nor the psalm of a land that rejoices, 
Einging from churches and cities and foundries a mighty 

refrain ! 
But the sun and the birds, and the frost, and the breezes 

that blow 
When tempests are striving and lightnings of heaven 
are spent, 
With one consent 
Make unto them 
Who died for us eternal requiem! 

XI. 

Lovely to look on, South, 
No longer stately-scornful 
But beautiful still in pride, 
Our hearts go out to you as toward a bride ! 



14 Gettysburg: A Battle Ode. 

Garmented soft in white, 
Haughty, and yet how love-imbuing and tender! 
You stand before us with your gently mournful 
Memory-haunted eyes and flower-like mouth, 
Where clinging thoughts — as bees a-cluster 
Murmur through the leafy gloom, 

Musical in monotone — 
Whisper sadly. Yet a lustre 
As of glowing gold-gray light 
Shines upon the orient bloom, 
Sweet with orange-blossoms, thrown 
Eound the jasmine-starred, deep night 
Crowning with dark hair your brow. 
Ruthless, once, we came to slay, 

And you met us then with hate. 
Rough was the wooing of war: we won you, 
Won you at last, though late ! 
Dear South, to-day, 
As our country's altar made us 

One forever, so we vow 
Unto yours our love to render: 
Strength with strength we here endow, 



Getty shurg : A Battle Ode. 15 

And we make your honor ours. 
Happiness and hope shall sun you ! 
All the wiles that half betrayed us 

Vanish from us like spent showers ! 

XII. 

Two hostile bullets in mid-air 

Together shocked, 

And swift were locked 
Forever in a firm embrace. 
Then let us men have so much grace 
To take the bullets' place, 
And learn that we are held 

By laws that weld 

Our hearts together ! 
As once we battled hand to hand, 
So hand in hand to-day we stand, 

Sworn to each other, 

Brother and brother, 
In storm and mist, or calm, translucent weather : 
And G-ettysburg's guns, with their death-giving roar, 
Echoed from ocean to ocean, shall pour 



// 



16 



Getty slur g : A Battle Ode. 



Quickening life to the nation's core; 
Filling our minds again 
With the spirit of those who wrought in the Field of the 
Flower of Men! 






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